The internet providers are de facto pretty close to the common carrier status (except maybe in cases of huge scale, like Netflix or google, where explicit net neutrality might be desirable). There are no huge technical or financial barriers to entry if you want to build a platform for communication over the internet, nothing comparable to e.g. telecom networks (either in 1950s or now).
The cost of acquiring a millions-strong audience, operating at that scale, and becoming essential for large swaths of society can be pretty low, both in financing and manpower; if Instagram is not a good example for you, take more extreme examples of Wikipedia or SciHub.
Would you like newspapers (e.g. that very NYT) be governmentally regulated because they are "too important for society"? It's dangerously close to the late Soviet Union. How effective NYT would be e.g. in uncovering the Watergate case were they regulated "for the common good"?
There's a particular fallacy that makes people think that some centralized regulation would be more efficient and lead to better outcomes than self-regulation on a level playing field. The efficiency is there in very few cases, mostly those that seriously defy common sense (e.g. control over antibiotics), or set safety guidelines against mass illness (e.g. food safety control). In most other cases, a bureaucratic body has as skewed incentives as a for-profit corporation, but much fewer reasons to improve anything.
>Would you like newspapers (e.g. that very NYT) be governmentally regulated because they are "too important for society"? It's dangerously close to the late Soviet Union. How effective NYT would be e.g. in uncovering the Watergate case were they regulated "for the common good"? There's a particular fallacy that makes people think that some centralized regulation would be more efficient and lead to better outcomes than self-regulation on a level playing field.
I don't really want media companies regulated too heavily, I want them broken up into many smaller companies. Same thing for big banks and big agriculture and the pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies and for data-harvesting tech companies like Google and Facebook. Break them up, force them to compete. I think to the extent that regulation is necessary in tech it should be regulating a common standard by which you can export your social media profile and move it to any other and then mandating complete access to all information a company has on me and a minimum damage value for all information leaks (say $10 per person).
Not every regulation has to be a giant bureaucratic mess. Instead we should look to government to set markets back to their rightful states - lots of information, lots of alternatives, lots of competition between those alternatives and little lock in.
> Would you like newspapers (e.g. that very NYT) be governmentally regulated because they are "too important for society"? It's dangerously close to the late Soviet Union.
I can agree with the first part of your argument, but you're going overboard here by declaring any form of regulation to be totalitarian in nature. Considerations on the interests of companies versus the interests of society as a whole can be made (and are made) in well-functioning democracies. It's continually difficult to strike a balance, and overzealous mistakes may be made or the process might be corrupted. Still, you can't wholly dismiss governmental regulation as the modern world simply functions on it.
Well it is more the regulation of their constraints on power that is inherently totalitarian exploitable as a power consolidating move - even if the passers don't do it with bad intentions it /will/ be exploited for all it is worth later. Operating under the assumption that every bill should be evaluated as if it will be done in bad faith is wise for the same reason the first rule of networking security is never trust the client.
It would be like ammending the constitution to allow punishing the supreme court for making bad decisions - technically it holds others accountable but that is not what it will be used for.
Not any form, but this particular form, that is, regulating the forms and contents of communication, is what moves a society closer to totalitarianism. The more regulated newspapers are, the harder it is to publish a fringe opinion, the less free a society is.
If we replace newspapers with other media, especially more peer-to-peer media like Facebook or Twitter, the effect only gets more pronounced. Look at Turkey or Russia for examples.
> Would you like newspapers (e.g. that very NYT) be governmentally regulated...
Specious argument. Internet providers are not content providers. Regulating content is not what's proposed. Those who provide access to content most certainly SHOULD be regulated. They're a common carrier, and no one with a profit motive has any business constraining access to content provided by others. That attitude befits each castle independently taxing passer-by river traffic.
If we're going to allow ISPs to tax us arbitrarily, we'd damned well better have more of them to choose from than the monopoly most of us 'enjoy' now.
The internet providers are de facto pretty close to the common carrier status (except maybe in cases of huge scale, like Netflix or google, where explicit net neutrality might be desirable). There are no huge technical or financial barriers to entry if you want to build a platform for communication over the internet, nothing comparable to e.g. telecom networks (either in 1950s or now).
The cost of acquiring a millions-strong audience, operating at that scale, and becoming essential for large swaths of society can be pretty low, both in financing and manpower; if Instagram is not a good example for you, take more extreme examples of Wikipedia or SciHub.
Would you like newspapers (e.g. that very NYT) be governmentally regulated because they are "too important for society"? It's dangerously close to the late Soviet Union. How effective NYT would be e.g. in uncovering the Watergate case were they regulated "for the common good"?
There's a particular fallacy that makes people think that some centralized regulation would be more efficient and lead to better outcomes than self-regulation on a level playing field. The efficiency is there in very few cases, mostly those that seriously defy common sense (e.g. control over antibiotics), or set safety guidelines against mass illness (e.g. food safety control). In most other cases, a bureaucratic body has as skewed incentives as a for-profit corporation, but much fewer reasons to improve anything.